subject: How You Can Actually Become Present in Each Moment of Your Life - The Little Prince Series [print this page] How You Can Actually Become Present in Each Moment of Your Life - The Little Prince Series
People often tell me, "I wish I could stay present. I'm trying to get there, but how do you stay in the moment? I find I manage to be present only at moments in my average day."
In the fifth chapter of the story of the Little Prince we are given one of the most powerful keys to living consciously on a continual basis.
The story uses the image of baobabs, a large African tree that, in the case of the Little Prince's tiny planet would, if allowed to grow, take it over and even split it in pieces.
The image is powerful. To not be present in our life causes us to feel fragmented, torn, at war with ourselves.
The narrator says of the Little Prince, "But he made a wise comment: Before they grow so big, the baobabs start out by being little.'"
Would you like to know how to become present continuously, so that you pretty well never move out of a state of presence?
A baobab represents everything that distracts us from the presence that's thenatural state of our true being. To become continuously present, you catch the baobabs that distract from this natural state themoment you recognize them.
How does this actually work in everyday life?
Sitting in front of a large audience in Mumbai, India, Eckhart Tolle is silent for several minutes. His eyes are open and one has a sense that he's alert and verypresent.
When he begins speaking he invites, "Have a look inside yourself and see if you're waiting for me to speak."
The ability to be present begins withself-inquiry.
You begin noticing, paying attention to, whether you are present in all of the little moments of life, such as waiting for something to begin.
Are youwaiting, which isn't a state of presence, or are you enjoying being just where you are, as you are?
Eckhart goes on to explain that in the normal human state of unconsciousness there's a deep-seated psychological need for the next moment, the future.
Consequently when we are waiting for something to happen, our emotions begin to churn. As Eckhart goes on to say in thisMumbai, India talk, "Perhaps even some impatience is arising, or irritation. Or your mind is taking you to some completely different place and timetonight, later, tomorrow."
Self-inquiry reveals when we are drifting from our normal state of presence. This leads to an opportunity for self-confrontation: recognizing the emotion that's arising.
I am saying that becoming present begins with the tiniest of moments and the most mundane of situations.
Suppose you are sitting waiting for Eckhart to talk, a concert to begin, dinner at a restaurant to be served, or a movie to get rolling. Self-inquiry allows you to spot when your mind begins to shift from simplybeing there to wandering elsewhere, either in location or time.
Self-inquiry is to look inside ourselves and see if we arewaiting for something to happen. I want to emphasize that we practice it in the tiniest of moments, the most ordinary of circumstances.
Once we realize we aren't present, we engage in self-confrontation.
Self-confrontation is tosit with any emotions of impatience, anxiety, or frustration that ariseinstead of venting them.
When we sit with unpleasant feelings instead of talking to others about them or fuming within ourselves, we practice containment.
Containment doesn't mean we deny what we are experiencing. We don't try to push the emotion out of our mind. Instead we bring presence to itawareness.
We sit with it, allowing it tobe. But we don't wallow in it, don't "make it into something."
As the story of the Little Prince explains, a bad seed has to be destroyed "as soon as possible, the very first instant that one recognizes it." This way it can't take root and become a habit pattern.
It's in all the ordinary little moments of our day, whenever we notice our attention has drifted, that we learn to be present.
The Little Prince explains that it's very tedious work pulling up baobab shoots, "but very easy." In other words there's nothing difficult about being present, for all that's required isconsistency.
Start in this moment, right now.
Are you fully alert, aware, present as you read these words? Are you sitting with them, allowing them to have real impact on you? Or are you dashing through the blog because you feel you have to get on to the next thing?
The feeling of needing to get on to the next thing is exactly what we need to sit with.
Confronting this psychological need we have meansnot rushing on to the next thing, but staying with the emotion that arises when we don't rush on, breathing through it, until the energy generating the emotion gradually dissipates and becomes integrated.
Self-inquiry, right now, will reveal what's happening inside you.
Then self-confront any emotion that arises by simply acknowledging it, sitting with it, watching itbut doing nothing about it.
You will be amazed what begins to happen. It's not about becoming present for your whole lifetime right now. It's incremental, moment by moment, becauselife is incremental. It's a series of moments that happen from moment to moment.
As you begin to be present inthis moment, then another moment, gradually the moments come together to form a complete picture just like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
You discover that present moment awareness is exactly that: not some amazing miracle of presence that descends upon you from the sky, but a lifetime made up ofmoments in each of which you are aware.
